Because the turnout in Morse's election in 2010 was so low — a race where he probably would have lost had there not been a Libertarian candidate — no one was surprised when that recall effort succeeded.It was a different story in Pueblo [Giron's district], a heavily Democratic district, where three plumbers armed with laptops linked to a state database not only collected enough valid signatures but had a low number thrown out. . . .

Just to see how hard it was to get these recalls made, consider: to get the recall 25 percent of all the votes cast in the previous election.
7,178 signatures were required on the petitions to recall Morse, that is compared to the 17,845 who voted in this recall (40%). 11,285 valid signatures were required against Giron, compared to 34,556 who voted in the recall (32%).In addition to this high threshold, they were outspent massively by Bloomberg.

Some interesting facts about Recall elections.
Recalls against legislative leaders, such as Morse, tend to be particularly tough to win. Here are some very interesting facts about recall elections from Joshua Spivak at The Recall Elections Blog. Prior to Morse, there have only been four recall elections against legislative leaders in the US, and the legislative leader was retained in three of those four races. In Colorado recall elections for other offices, officials have survived at better than 50 percent rate. These recalls represent only the 37th and 38th recall votes of state legislators in US history, with the success rate prior to these two votes being exactly 50 percent.

How heavily Democratic were these districts?To get an idea of how heavily Democratic these two districts are, one only needs to turn to the Daily Kos:

In Giron's district in Pueblo County, where Democrats comprise 47 percent of all registered voters and Republicans just 23 percent, Democrats have the vote lead, but there's a catch. Pueblo is a blue-collar, blue-dog Democratic town and 20 percent of the voters who signed petitions to recall the senator were Democrats.

Democrats reported that between the two Senate districts, they had about 350 volunteers working in shifts and expected to knock on more than 23,000 doors before the polls close at 7 p.m. . . .

Shortly before 6:30 p.m., the El Paso County clerk reported that a total of 17,272 voters had marked ballots since early voting began. The latest El Paso figures show vote total by party affiliation as: Republicans, 6,647; Democrats, 5,784; and unaffiliated, 4,580. . . .

The party breakdown in Senate District 3 is as follows: Democrats, 14,633; Republicans, 10,329; and unaffiliated, 6,867. . . .

From Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics:

part of what occurred was that GOP turnout was unusually strong for an off-year special election. The “recall Morse” line received 9,000 votes, while the “recall Giron” effort drew 19,000 votes. (Mitt Romney received 26,000 votes in Giron’s district, and 19,000 in Morse’s.) In Giron’s district in particular, this was a surprisingly high turnout for an off-year special election.For that matter, Morse’s GOP opponent received 13,500 votes in 2010, while Giron’s GOP opponent won 20,000 votes in that year. In other words, despite the intervening redistricting cycle, which helped Democrats somewhat, GOP turnout in this special election equaled midterm turnout in Giron’s district, and came close in Morse’s. . . .

It appears that you can. For one thing, that 90 percent number represents something of a best case result drawn from a best-case question wording; actual public support for, say, universal background checks is somewhat lower (though clearly still a majority). Perhaps, as I explained in April, the energy is all on the side of the voters who oppose gun control. For example, while Americans might support universal background checks in the abstract, in practice they just don’t care that much about it. Those who oppose them, however, care a lot. . . .

3 Comments:

Lott, here's a man I would love to debate. Your works down this road are of dubious quality. However, the NRA made you the money you sought. Your value as a decent man is questionable.

If you ever care to discuss the variance in murder data between the FBI and CDC that would be nice. Then use a acceptable variance to adjust the 4 violent crime categories. Then, comparatively, adjust for the violent crime difference in Europe by Developed Nations to actually have an honest comparison of violent crime. Against Canada, I did work to account for variance and then reduced the violent crime in Canada to Forcible Rape and Aggravated Assault. Turns out the U.S. is has more violent crime with a correct comparison.

I guess you didn't want to work that hard. Your work is full of holes but substantial for the basic use in propaganda. Many educators with credentials have take horrid paths for personal gain siding with historically corrupt societies. History is full of people like you.

Dear David:Sorry, but you obviously haven't read my work. If you had you would at least feel compelled to address the problems that I point to with regard to cross-sectional data. Since you aren't going to read my books and you apparently haven't even taken the time to search my website, let me make it easy for you with a couple short discussions.http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2013/01/so-what-can-us-learn-from-other.htmlhttp://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2012/12/so-did-piers-morgan-and-christiane.html